Ullapool Book Festival Programme Launched

At an event on Saturday James Robertson, honorary president of Ullapool Book Festival, announced the programme for the 7th festival that will be held from Friday 6th to Sunday 8th May.

The exciting line-up includes such notable writers as poet Don Paterson, awarded the Queen’s medal for Poetry in 2010, Bernard MacLaverty, John Burnside and crime writer Denise Mina.

The organisers have pulled off a literary coup by bringing an award-winning Canadian writer to the festival. Linden MacIntyre was awarded the 2009 Scotiabank Giller prize for fiction, Canada’s foremost literary prize for his most recent novel The Bishop’s Man. he works for the Canadian public broadcaster, CBC, where he is a co-host of a popular investigative television program, the fifth estate. He has won numerous awards for work on the CBC and the U.S. public broadcasting program, Frontline, and for his books. He will speak at two festival sessions – one on his investigative journalism and one on The Bishop’s Man.

Gaelic literature will have a prominent role. There will be poetry and fiction from Skye writer Maoilios Caimbeul (Myles Campbell) and a session with Peter Mackay on his critically acclaimed critique of Sorley Maclean in his centenary year.

There will also be more fiction from Nora Chassler, Doug Johnstone, Aidan Moffat and Eleanor Thom; more poetry from two Shetland writers Robert Alan Jamieson and Christine De Luca; and storytelling from Ian Stephen from Lewis. As usual there will be free early morning sessions with poets Rhoda Michael and Chris Powici and with short story writers from Ross-shire Writers.

Scottish Opera makes its debut at the Ullapool Book Festival with A Little Bit of Rigoletto, a free 20-minute version of Verdi’s classic tragic opera Rigoletto.